Glory Of The Football Manager System

”After Manchester,” I said.

Sarah shut the folder with her thumb still inside it.

”Then Manchester,” she said. ”Ben plays left back.”

Somebody in our dressing room had found the speaker again. It was coming down the corridor with Blake’s name over the top of it, and the Grimsby end were still going at the stewards outside, and I had been on my feet since 6 that morning.

I told her Tyrick played. I had told him so on Thursday. Both legs.

”You told him on Thursday before you knew it would be Mahrez on that side.” She said it to the folder.

”Ben was at Leicester with Mahrez for 3 seasons. He has kicked him in training more times than anybody alive. I am not asking you to drop the boy, Danny. I am asking you to put the man on the pitch who knows the answer.”

I said no.

She wrote TM ETIHAD inside the cover and drew a box round it, and the pen went through the paper at 1 corner.

Then it was mine, she said, and went off down the corridor towards the noise.

I drove home with the radio off. Emma was asleep. I ate a cold sausage roll out of the fridge standing up at the counter and did not taste it.

I told Ben Chilwell at 9 on Monday, in the gym, because he would have read it on a wall otherwise.

He was on the bike. He listened to all of it without stopping pedalling, which took some doing, because the resistance was up high and his face had gone red.

”Right,” he said.

That was all. He finished his 20 minutes. He got off, wiped the seat down with a towel, threw the towel at the basket and missed, and left it on the floor.

I let him go. I would have left it on the floor as well.

He came back at 11. Not to me. He walked into the canteen with a plate of chicken and rice, past 3 empty tables, and sat down opposite Tyrick Mitchell, who was eating on his own with his hood up and his phone propped against the salt.

I was at the hatch. I heard most of it.

Chilwell said Riyad’s name with his mouth full, and asked whether anybody had told him anything proper about the man. Not Marcus. Proper.

Mitchell said Marcus had given him some clips.

”Clips are no good with him. He knows where the cameras are.” Chilwell pointed his fork at him.

”He does a thing with his hip before he goes outside. I cannot tell you what it is.”

It had taken him 2 years to see it, he said, and he still could not have drawn it on a board.

”But I will know it when I see it, so tomorrow you are watching him with me, on the train, and every time I say now, you look.”

Mitchell asked why he was doing it.

Chilwell put the fork down.

”Because if you get done on Wednesday I am the 1 who goes on at 60 minutes against him with no warm-up and a crowd that hates me,” he said. ”So eat your rice.”

Mitchell ate his rice.

On Tuesday morning they came to my office together at 20 past 8, Mitchell and Blake. Nobody good ever knocks on my door at 20 past 8.

Blake had something written on the back of his hand in biro. I could see it from the desk.

He started well. It was about the 23rd, after Wembley, after the second leg. They did not want anything doing. No speech. No photograph with the shirt. No round of applause in the canteen, because he had seen them do that for a kitman’s retirement and it was...

He looked at his hand.

”It is like a funeral,” Mitchell said, from behind him.

”It is like a funeral,” Blake said. ”Thank you, Ty.”

I told them it was a loan. They were coming back in May.

”That is what I am saying.” Blake had lost his place on the hand completely now and was going from memory. ”If you make a fuss it looks like we are not. Just let us go on the Thursday like it is a Thursday.”

Deano would want the shirts back, I said. They could have that much fuss.

Mitchell laughed, once, through his nose, and then looked embarrassed about it.

We went north at 1 on the train. Deano had gone at 7 in the van with the kit and a flask and the radio, the same as always.

Sarah sat across from me reading the competition rules she has known since June, out of habit. No away goals in the semi-finals any more. Level after 2 legs and it went straight to penalties at Wembley, no extra time.

”So we bring back what we bring back,” she said, and kept reading.

4 rows down Ben Chilwell had his laptop open between him and Mitchell and a bag of wine gums open between them as well. Every 2 or 3 minutes he said ”Now,” and stopped it, and Mitchell leaned in.

Somewhere around Milton Keynes I heard Mitchell say he could not see it, and Chilwell tell him he knew that, and to watch it again.

Past Stoke it was the same. After Crewe there was nothing from that table for about 10 minutes. Then Chilwell’s voice, quite loud.

”There. That. Did you see that?”

Mitchell said he thought so.

Chilwell said thought so back to him, flat, and shut the laptop. Then he ate the last green wine gum. Mitchell had been saving it.

Connor Blake slept the whole way with his head on the window, and woke up in Manchester with the shape of the rubber seal printed down the side of his face.

The hotel bar had the other semi-final on, Spurs and Chelsea, and I watched 20 minutes of it and went to bed. I could not tell you the score now without looking.

Rebecca passed all 18 at 10 that night. She had written Olise 70 on her card and nothing else.

I could not sleep. At half 12 I went down to the hotel gym for no reason except that it was somewhere to walk to, and the light was on.

Tyrick Mitchell was on the bike in a pair of hotel slippers with Chilwell’s laptop balanced on the handlebars and the sound off. He was not pedalling. He had the same 4 seconds of Riyad Mahrez going round and round, a touchline at the King Power, a hip, a ball.

He saw me in the mirror and took his feet off the pedals as if I had caught him at something.

I told him to go to bed. He said he would, in a minute. I left him to it and went back up in the lift, and I lay on top of the covers in my clothes until about 2.

MANCHESTER CITY: Muric. Walker, Otamendi, García, Zinchenko. De Bruyne, Gündoğan, Silva. Mahrez, Jesus, Sané.

CRYSTAL PALACE: Krul. Wan-Bissaka, Konaté, Sakho, Mitchell. Kirby, Neves, Olise. Bowen, Blake, Eze.

Bench: Hennessey, Chilwell, Dann, Højbjerg, Grealish, Cartwright, Asare.

Guardiola had picked De Bruyne and Gündoğan and David Silva, Sané and Jesus up front, and Mahrez on the right, on Mitchell’s side. A cup team in name. Sarah handed me the sheet in the corridor and kept her finger on Mahrez’s name a moment before she let go of it.

It was the cold that I remember. Manchester in January after dark, a wet cold that came up through the soles of my shoes and stayed there. Our corner had a bedsheet that said HOLDERS and they needed 4 people to hold it because of the wind.

Prrrp.

City came at us like they had been told something about us in the dressing room that they had not liked.

They pressed Krul from the first back pass. They pressed Neves. Gündoğan stood so close to him that Neves turned round in the 3rd minute and said something, and Gündoğan smiled and stayed exactly where he was.

Krul enjoyed it. He has stood in a World Cup shootout. 2 City players running at him at 7 minutes past 8 was a pleasant evening out by comparison. He waited until they were nearly on him and rolled it between them to Sakho, and pulled a face at the 2 of them as they went past.

Mahrez got his first touch on 7 minutes, out on the right, and came at Mitchell slowly with the ball on his left.

From where I was stood I could not see his hip. I could see Chilwell on the bench beside me lean forward with his elbows on his knees.

Mahrez went inside. Mitchell went with him and showed him onto Sakho, and Sakho put his body in and the ball went out for a throw.

Chilwell said fine, under his breath, and then good.

On 12 Mahrez came again. Chilwell said ”Now,” out loud, to nobody, about half a second before Mahrez knocked it down the outside. Mitchell was already turning. He got there first and played it off Mahrez’s shins for a throw, and the City end booed the throw, and our corner cheered it.

Chilwell sat back and folded his arms and said nothing for 10 minutes.

On 24 it went wrong.

There was nothing clever in it. Mahrez came at him and Mitchell went to ground, a yard too early on wet grass, the thing every coach he has ever had will have told him not to do.

Mahrez lifted the ball over his leg and kept going. He never had to beat him. He walked round him.

Then he curled it across the box with his left foot, low and fast, to the far post, and Leroy Sané arrived and volleyed it in from 8 yards.

Thump.

1-0.

The noise in that ground went up and came down on us, and I felt it in my teeth.

Mitchell sat on the wet grass where he had gone down and put his hand on the back of his head.

Beside me Chilwell had his face in both hands. He said something into them that I am leaving out. Then he took the hands away and put his tracksuit top on, slowly, and zipped it to the neck, the way a man does when he thinks he is about to be told to warm up.

Sarah came and stood on my left.

”Ben,” she said.

That was all of it. She stood there in her coat with her hands in the pockets and waited.

I looked at Mitchell. He was up off the grass by then, walking back to his position, and he was not looking at the bench. He was looking at Mahrez. He kept looking at him all the way back to his mark.

I shook my head.

Sarah breathed out through her nose and went back to her seat. Chilwell unzipped his top again, very slowly, about halfway, and stopped there.

For the rest of that half Mitchell stayed on his feet. Twice Mahrez came at him and dropped a shoulder to put him on the floor again, and twice Mitchell stood there and took the shoulder and stayed up. The second time Mahrez gave it back to Walker and threw his hands up at somebody, I could not see who.

Prrrp. Prrrp.